An Interview with Favorite Author Joanna Bourne

It’s a pleasure to welcome to my blog today a very favorite author of mine, Jo Bourne—the author of the wonderful Spymaster series, several of which have been reviewed on my blog. I love the detail and thoughtfulness Jo brings to her 18th and 19th century spy stories set in England and France. She brings us characters we can't help but love. (I’m so glad they show up in more than one of her novels!) Jo has graciously agreed to give a copy of THE BLACK HAWK (reviewed on my blog this week) to one of those commenting on this post.

As to the interview, I asked Jo some questions that had been in the back of my mind for some time about her and her writing. I think you’ll find her answers fascinating!

• Tell us about yourself…where you grew up, where you live now…the things that shaped you as a person?

I'm in the foothills of Western Virginia, where the human to mosquito ratio runs about one of us to a million of them. I'm surprised this area is not more thickly settled with writers since it is a fine place to stay inside and write. I live here with my family and my dog and cat, both of them previously owned shelter specials.

Before coming to the paradise on earth, I spent a number of years working for the Federal Government overseas. This was lovely and exciting. Sometimes a bit too exciting. Frankly, I'm glad to be back and do most of my traveling to and from the grocery store. I lived in about a dozen countries -- I'm too lazy to count it up at the minute -- But I got to see most of the world. And I lived in both England and France. (The photo is Rue des Rosiers in Paris.) This is a real help in setting stories there.

• What drew you to writing historical romance novels?

When I was in elementary school, I read a lot of Science Fiction . . . and adventure and boys' actions books and fantasy and historical fiction and folktales and a good bit of stuff that wasn't fiction at all. Roughly, everything under the sun. If I had to say what led me to Romance, I'd blame it on Georgette Heyer. Such delightful, funny books. Why do I write Romance? Well, I want to write an adventure story. Does this sound like a roundabout way to approach it?

I was immensely peeved, when I was a kid that boys seemed to have all the adventures in books. When I write Romance, the women have the adventures. I want the happy ending. And I want to write about important stuff. Does it sound hokey to admit I want to tell readers that bravery and kindness matter and that they are rewarded? I want to say that love and the ordinary, domestic joys of life are terribly important. That's what Romance says. That's what the HEA gives us.

• How much time does it take you to write one of your wonderful Spymaster novels?

About a year. I know everybody else on earth seems to write faster. I guess it takes me a couple of tries to get stuff right.

• How much of that time is devoted to the research? And, do you love the research?

I love to do research. You can plop me down with some good 1800s letters or a nice Regency era diary and I am just as happy as a hog in clover. If it were not for the pesky need to actually do some writing I'd just research. Hard to say how much of my time is devoted to research. When I first picked the era and the countries I wanted to write about, the initial familiarization took as much as half my time. Now that I'm comfy in the early 1800s, it's more like 5% or 10%.

• What resources do you reach for in researching your novels?

I have good, print research materials. I'm generally picking up one book or another to read just for the fun of it. That's on background, you might say. I keep some favorite research books in social history, historical language and spy stuff. For social history -- I keep my old copies of Bryant's Set in a Silver Sea or Asa Brigg's Social History of England and browse through them sometimes. But there are good social history surveys every year.

Greenwood Press puts out a series of accessible reads -- Daily Life in 18th Century England, Daily Life in Victorian England and Daily Life During the French Revolution.

What else have I enjoyed in the social history field recently? The Regency Underworld, Donald Low. Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England, 1600 to 1770, Emily Cockayne. Our Village, Nancy Mitford.

For Regency language I like Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue and Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and, of course, the OED (Oxford English Dictionary). And spies. I have read a lot about Regency era spies. This is kind of specialized research. If you're interested in this, I have a bibliography at: http://jobourne.blogspot.com/2010/06/and-back-to-some-questions.html

But it's not all beer and skittles and research books. I love the Internet for visuals. Almost all my clothing research is on line. My visuals of everyday objects are often on line. If I need to actually know a single solid factoid, I go to the web. Say I want to find out if the word "hornswoggle" was in use in 1795 in England. (Answer: probably not.) I'd go to Google Books and run a search.

And I do some hoofing around to see what's left of my era's history. I've been very lucky indeed. I've been able to spend a lot of time in old houses, museums, and at living history and re-enactor sites. There's nothing like the reality of these everyday objects, 'up close and personal', to give you the nitty gritty of the time. For instance, Napoleon's dispatch case looks just like a modern brief case. Who knew?

• Do you have character write-ups or other devices to help you get into the head of a character?

I really don't. Now, I do crawl into the head of the character. That's my writing space. But I don't get there by knowing facts about them and I don't get there on Day One. I get acquainted with my people in the way you'd come to know a friend or a coworker, over time. I've thought about them for weeks or months. I've pictured them in all sorts of situations.

The kind of specifics that can be written down in a notebook -- age, color of eyes, whether they like raspberries, what kind of school they went to -- these are definitely useful. I need them the same way I might need a particular date or the color of a uniform in the Sixth Infantry or whether there was stainless steel available in 1802. I do try to keep all those factoids in a file somewhere. If I remember. Mostly I don't remember and then I end up having to chase somebody's eye colors through the final draft and hope I remember I caught all the mentions of it so I haven't made a Dreadful Mistake anywhere.

• Who is your favorite character in your novels?

Folks are going to think I'll say Adrian ("Hawker"). In truth, I'm very fond of Adrian. But I my love and respect for Doyle is profound and special. I find him sly and humorous and cynical. Does it make me sound trivial if I say I just truly do like a huge, strong, sizable fellow?

Doyle appears in all four of my books, three times as a secondary character. His 'love story' is told in FORBIDDEN ROSE. I wrote that book third, but it's set in the earliest time period, in 1794, during the French Revolution.

• What do you think is your best work thus far?

In terms of the books, I think FORBIDDEN ROSE is the best written, overall. [Regan's Note: this book is reviewed on my blog.] And I'd say the character Lazarus was hard and complicated to write and I think he turned out well. I'm proud of creating him.

• What is the most difficult aspect of romance writing for you?

Man, it's all hard. I do most of the work on micro-manipulation of the prose. Hardest? The sex scenes. I would really like to infuse those sensual scenes with meaning and significance. And sensuality.

If I had to pick the love scene I like best, it would be Hawker and Justine's first love scene in BLACK HAWK. They're so young and so tough. So damaged.

That was one of the rare cases that I wrote one way, and then the editor sent me back to do it over again. She said Hawker deserved a better love scene. She was right.

• What are you working on now and what are the challenges?

I'm writing Pax's story right now. It's set in 1802, so it will be kind of midway through the timeline of the series.

(I often write in coffee shops, so I drink a lot of coffee…)

As for challenges, what isn't a problem? Hmmm. I'm working right now on giving the hero and heroine more time together. Plot, plot, plot. Plotting is so hard for me. You asked me what my working title was for this one. When I work on a manuscript, I call it by the name of the heroine. In my own mind and in the computer, I'm working on the 'Cami Story'. I don't give the manuscript a fancier working title because I know that is not going to end up as the title of the book.

• Do you have a series or a novel planned after the Spymaster series?

Alas. I come up completely empty on that. I am so deeply in the grip of the Pax manuscript that I have no time or thought left to worry about what comes next.

Thanks, Jo, for candidly sharing your thoughts with us. Now for the "listening audience"--any questions or comments for Jo?